Had the meeting about the Blue Fusion video today and indeed the direction is to rework it into a corporate video. It sure does sound like a great opportunity having the chance to work on a project like this. Having the lab director see the original version (which was created the day after a black tie birthday party, involving much alcohol), and see potential in it was quite exciting. So that shall be added to my list of things to do, including Matt's music video, HTX video, web site work and, oh yeah, the day job. No wonder why my garden is getting overgrown.

So this video will most likely involve recording some interviews on site, then editing using (if I get my way), Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effect 7, and naturally, some LightWave.

Do I get time out of my day job to work on this? Answer: No; that would make life way too easy. I'm just glad of the opportunity, but I'm not yet sure how I'll pull it off. There are other things of a higher priority at the moment.

But, amongst the mayhem of my life feeling like someone selecting all the desktop icons and pressing the 'Enter' key, I did managed to take delivery of, not 1, not 2, but 7 (yes 7) new training DVDs. These Kurv DVSs consist of 6 LightWave ones; ranging from industrial modelling to lighting and shading; and one ZBrush one.

So what do you get if you mix LightWave with ZBrush? Dunno, but you can see for yourself:
LightWaveAndZBrush.mov (625KB)

So I seem to be caught up in a whirlwind of projects at the moment. IBM is showing that final push to do what should have been done months ago (don't worry, I've learnt not to believe in miracles). Freelance work is full-on with coding a new payment gateway and full backend order and stock management system. Whoah! Plus there's that HTX (Hursley Technical Exchange) video that needs editing and music sequencing added; but simply not of a priority at the moment.

Tuesday shall be interesting where I have a meeting about adapting my Blue Fusion video for some corporate presentation. Should be an interesting meeting, and as usual, the prediction will be that will end up with more work to do.

I'm also putting together some ideas for a music video for The Rivers of Sound. The track in mind will be Dreamer's Dream. I plan for it to involve CG, composition in After Effects and green screen shots of the band. Sure it's an ambitious project, but if I pull it off, my portfolio will actually have some merit.

But to keep my creative mind flowing (pun intended), I've been playing around with the awesome open-source Blender 3D. Now, you may be thinking, why use a free application like Blender when I already own LightWave and Modo. The answer is because it now supports fluid dynamics.

So here's what I created (QuickTime required):

A simple blob that splashes on the ground.
FluidTest.mov (145KB)

Now lets try to fill a mug with a pool of falling water which involves setting the proper materials.
MugFluidTest.mov (667KB)

But after realising that the native Blender renderer has a bug (hence the dotted grid on the floor), I discovered that I should be using the open-source render Yafray. And of course, why flood the scene while I'm at it.
MugFluidTestPour.mov (1.58MB)

My plan now is to figure out how to export the fluid animation into LightWave. But that is sadly a challenge for another day as I've got other work I need to be doing. My biggest dream is the day I only have one 9-5 job; how sad is that.